Memoirs of the Best Dog in the World
by RuGrimm
Summary: An original collection of stories of my best friend, Duke, in his honor. Born September 2003, died April 17, 2015. If you thought Marley was bad, you have no idea.


So hello my fellow friends and writers, it is I, Grimm. Yesterday was a very heartbreaking day for me.

I lost my best friend.

When pepople say they have a best friend, what do you picture in your mind? A person that stuck with you all the way?

My best friend wasn't a person,. It was a dog. And his name was Duke. For the past eleven years, Duke has been a best friend, a guardian, and a third parent. He's saved my life several times, and been there when no one else would be. And he died last night of a heart attack in his sleep.

Death is one of the many things in the world that it both expected and unexpected. It was just the night before that we were talking about putting him down because of his severe hip dysplasia and dementia. Over the past month, Duke had lost nearly thirty pounds no matter how hard we would try to get him to eat. We knew it would be soon for him, but we didn't know it would be yesterday.

When I walked through the door last night, I hadn't seen my dog, and I immediately questioned where he was. We have an old cot, and he loved to lay on it all the time with his favorite blue blanket (naturally torn and ripped over the last decade). Seeing him laying on it, I figured he was only taking a nap.

I live on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and I own several chickens. While my father and brother went to go get the eggs, I was sitting the bathroom (humming the tune to Think of Me from the Phantom of the Opera) brushing my hair for the trip, and when I heard voices in the other room, I thought that it was my mother coming home from work. So I sat down that brush and left the bathroom to say greetings to my mother whom I know would be tired and stressed from work. However, when I reached the kitchen, I saw both my father and brother crying and leaning against our refrigerator, and I knew something tragic had happened.

You know that feeling when you just know that something happened? I knew it was Duke the moment I saw their faces, and I don't really know how I knew. For a moment, I tried to come up with different scenarios of why they could possibly be falling apart. Maybe Mom got in a car wreck on the way home. What if my other dog (a beagle x basset hound puppy named Copper) had been run over and even shot because we can't ever stop him from chasing the neighbor's cattle (no one ever said he was smart). But as I took the eggs from him and put them away, I knew that it was Duke. No matter how much that I wished it wasn't. Nothing could have prepared me for it, and when they told me, and my father hugged me and sobbed in my hair, I found that I couldn't cry. I couldn't show him how much I was devastated.

I've never been much of a crier. Even at my beloved aunt's funeral, I didn't even shed a tear. My aunt had been the one who raised my mother, and I've seen my mother cry even less than my father. Since then, I've come to realize that the burden of being the strong one in my family had to be me. I'm the one who can handle death and grief without showing how I feel. Inside, I beat myself up because I think I'm an awful person. But I know I'm not. I know I'd give up all of my posessions and give it to a random person on the street in a heartbeat. Yet, I know that if I am the one that breaks, no one else will be able to keep us all from sinking.

My family was the Titanic yesteray, and Duke was the iceberg we hit. I was simply the scarce life boats trying to save as much life as I could.

Despite the part of me that blames myself for not checking on my dog sooner, I know that by how stiff he was when we tried to move him, he must have gone even before I went home.

As my father called my mother, face buried in one hand as he paced outside, I tried to close my dogs eyes and found that I couldn't. I suppose his eyes open didn't really bother me anyway. No matter how much I loved Duke, he still kinda creeped me out because he had a way of sleeping with his eyes partially open anyway. It was always hard to tell whether or not he was sleeping or looking at you. I suppose the only true way we could tell was whether or not he was chasing those rabbits in his sleep. I wonder if he ever caught any of them.

My mother came home in less than ten minutes after that, and we walked through our barn lot and tried to think of a place to bury our beloved dog. We chose out on the fenceline of our pasture by an old sickle bar and some sort of tree in which I do not know. It was deciduous, so I suppose that rules out the pines, and elms, and other coniferous trees.

Duke was buried there with his favorite blue blankie, ,and we have yet to mak his gravestone. My plan is that when they bloom, I will take those stupid, purple flowers in the front yard that he always had some sort of compulsion to eat year after year and lay them on his gravesite. Think of it as a snack for him in Puppy Heaven.

I suppose I've started in the end of thins, and most of this is for me to remember when I've grown old and decrepit. But at least I'll still be able to say that I had the best dog in the world.

Duke.

So, I suppose the beginning of our tale is due.

When I was about three or four, we moved to St. Louis with my baby brother (I don't live there anymore, obviously. But still). I scarcely remember a commercial about several puppies thrown away in a trash bin, and that following day, my dad took one of these puppies home. He was so small, he fit in his black, leather jacket pocket (I know what you're thinking, no my dad is not a biker). While I was watching my favorite show on our big-screen TV, my dad kneeled in front of us and opened up his jacket, and there a little black puppy literally jumped out at us.

Duke was far from a pure bred dog. He was as mutt as mutt could possibly be. There was Dalmation, boxer, pitbull, labrador, maybe even a blood hound, and so many things that I could not possibly list them all. But it's funny how the best dog in the world was better than all of those first place winners every year on Thanksgiving.

Naturally, any puppy would be trouble. They eat almost everything. But with Duke...well Puppy Syndrome doesn't begin to cover it.

Nearly six months later, my parents decided to go on a honeymoon to Colorado. Their best friend, Mike, had volenteered to take care of Duke while they were away and while me and my brother stayed at my aunt's. The first thing we told him to do was come over early and meet Duke because he was extremely territorial when it came to his home. And did he listen?

No.

The first day he ever met Duke was the day he began to babysit him. His mistake. At first, all was well. Why?

Because Duke had to pee. That is why.

Mike opened the door, and like lightning, Duke did a hell-mary run to the yard and peed while Mike went inside. Moment after he was done...he realized...that wasn't his Daddy. That wasn't my father.

Somewhere in between this realization and the end of our tale, Duke had managed to chase Mike into the REFRIGERATOR, pulling the door closed as close as he could (no offense to Mike, but with his size, it wasn't very much, I gurantee it). And it wasn't long before my dad got a call.

"Hey *****?"

"Yeah Mike?"

"You're gonna need to buy some more meat."

"Why?"

"I just threw all of them at your dog."

In order to defend himself, Mike began throwing ever ounce of meat and leftovers from the fridge at Duke that he possibly could. Hot dogs, leftover steak, bologna, turkey, and more was not able to escape the clutches of a at man trying to defend himself. Needless to say, Mike became Duke's best friend that day.

But the true horror only began until after Mike left. You see, later that day, my cousin Crissy had come over to get a tent for a camping trip. The rest of the house was sealed off by two baby gates stacked on top of each other in the doorway. She forgot to put one up.

Therefore, that night, my dog was nearly the end of our home that night. Because what better to be locked in a kitcheen pantry and have full access to everything in the house.

The next morning, I bet Mike had a heart attack (no pun intended there. Worst joke ever considering how Duke died).

Duke had managed to chew through the baby locks on the pantry doors, grabbing every ounce of food dogly possible. Flour had been tossed onto the counters and somehow on the top of the ceiling fan blades and on the ceiling itself. He'd crushed cans of tomato juice and cream of muschroom soup, spilling them all over the floor. Ripping apart speghetti boxes, noodles were torn and scattered across the floor like confetti. We know he got on the counter, for their were puppy prints on that flour. He got into the cookie jar on the counter, and busted three bottles of wine (that I've never seen any of my parents drink except for one occasion.).

Loaves of bread, cracker boxes, jars of peanut butter, popcorn, and an entire box of baking soda did not escape his wrath. He ate them all.

Next, he managed to get into the cabinets under the sink where he ate TWO bottles of dish soap and an entire box of SOS PADS.

After managing to jump over the gate, he went into the bathroom where he ate an entire packages of soap bars, baby no-tear shampoo, a bottle of condutioner, and an entire pack of paper towels shredded and tossed across the batroom tile. But he wasn't done there just yet.

I swear on Duke's grave that he took the end of the roll of toilet paper screwed into the wall, and ran through the entire house with it until there was nothing left...and then followed it back while eating it and tearing it to shreds as well.

Remember all of that soap and the box of SOS pads? Not only was the dog faurting BUBBLES, but he had managed to poop so much, it was like a battlefield full of landmines- -sticky, gooey, almost liquidy crap. Imagine the world's worst diarehhea...and then times that by about six.

Mike took his entire family and spent four hours cleaning our house. And my parents came home early from their honeymoon and called the vet.

Vet said that if he wasn't dead yet, he'd be fine.

Now, as any puppy, the outside world is a very curious thing. What could possibly be behind that solid, six foot tall chain fence around my yard? He found out the hard way, and it nearly cost him his life.

I cannot recall what we must have been doing that night. My mother was working the late shift, and it was my dad who was bringing me and my brother home. Perhaps it was one of those nights where my mother would bring my to work and our father would take us home.

Anyway, when we came home, we noticed that Duke wasn't at the gate to greet us, and the door to the house was wide open. Checking inside, we realized that he must have let himself out of the house (as I'm sure that's where he was supposed to have been). Searching, we kept calling his name, and we were nearly ready to leave our house when we saw Duke limping up the hill of our yard to greet us.

I didn't ever get to see how bad it was. And though it was so long ago, the two year old mutt was laid out in front of our stove on his blue blanket and my father called Mike. My brother and I stayed home all night by ourselves for the first time as my father stayed at the emergancy pet clinic in downtown St. Louis.. I know that several of his ribs were crushed, his shoulder dislocated, and his skull had taken some sort of trauma, though I hardly recall the extent of it. All I know is that they asked my father, "Do you want to pay the two grand it will take to fix him, or do you want to pay a hundred and put him down?"

He called my mother with this news, and she simply asked, "Is he going to be able to have a good life?"

To this, the doctor said yes, so she said, "My aunt always told me that something's worth is determined by the things in life that they have already done. How many dogs in the world would sit there as a two year old child (my brother) toddles across the room and bellyflops on top of it and turn around and lick that baby in the face?"

"None," said my dad.

"Then do it. Fix that dog, and bring our baby home."

Duke was put on strict bed rest for several days and was forced to wear a cone for weeks.. He made a near full recovery, though I always called him 'Pinhead' because of the knot he gained on the top of his head. I regret that calling him Pinhead was the last thing I ever said to him.

I will post many other stoies of my dog if others do so wish it. Duke certainly was a one in a million dog, and I've never written annything so personal before. There was a time that he did save my life, and if you guys so wish it, I shall tell that to you too. I just thought that an awesome dog like this deserves a chaneat immortality too. I believe that Duke was worth more than three human lives put together, and he earned his place as the best dog in the world. If you thought that Marley (from Marley and Me) was a good dog, it was nothing compared to Duke. I loved him, and still do, from the bottom of my heart. He earned his place in heaven. I know he did.


End file.
